In general when my razors begin to lose the comfort factor I will usually refresh them on the yellow coticule. Its usually a quick and painless proceedure and gets them right up to snuff again.
However to illustrate this whole honing thing, I got this eboy special. It is a Rogers Frameback 6/8s probably late 1800s and more wedge than typical frameback and the edge was in dreadful condition. Under the microscope there was no bevel just a highly polished rounded edge and not much of that. Initially I did my usual eboy special routine but spent more time on the 4K to establish a bevel until it looked good but it wasn't working. So back to the hone.I must have spent 2 hours on the 4K Norton honing with pressure to reestablish the bevel and under the scope it looked real good. I then went to the 8K (using bunches of pyramid schemes)and then the coticule and it really looked good. Unfortunately it wouldn't shave worth a damn.(it actually passed the HHT-very strange because arm shaving just caused it to pull and mangle) So I went back to the 4K for about another hour using pressure and then about 15 minutes with no pressure (you notice I'm not counting strokes here but the minutes) and under the scope it looked super and the thunbnail test passed so I decided to go to the belgian blue which I seldom use and spent about 30 minutes on that and it started to come around and slowly started to arm shave so another 30 minutes on the blue then I switched to the 8K Norton for about 20 minutes then that baby was passing all the tests. From there I went to the 12K Kitayama. That razor is so sharp now it would probably cut a silk scarf in two-so how does it shave? I don't know I'll use it tomorrow and let you know however one of my points here is that the first time I tried to hone it it just wasn't working and it seemed at first like one of those project razors that would never come around. I was doing all kinds of pyramids and switching hones and doing everything I could think of and it just didn't feel right on the hones but I kind of went with the numbers because in this case I felt like a newbee trying to hone his first razor and really had no clues. But, this last time I just honed until it just felt right on each hone. So do I think it will shave? I would be suprised if it didn't just because of the feel as I honed it but even if it needs more work it will probably need just more touch-up on either the 12K or the coticule. We'll see.
I think one of the problems is that many of use are in this mindset of the less honing we do the better which is true but when you get a real problem razor all bets are off as to how much honing is required. The only thing I'll say is for this one I wish I had a 1K hone.